HAMOODUR RAHMAN COMMISSION

HAMOODUR RAHMAN COMMISSION The Hamoodur Rahman Commission was appointed by President, later Prime Minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1972, to investigate the circumstances that led to the secession of East Pakistan and the emergence of Bangladesh as an independent state The commission’s appointment served to still the clamor for accountability in West Pakistan-now Pakistan-for the breakup of Pakistan in December 1971 and for the defeat of the Pakistan army at the hands of a combined force of the Indian army and Mukti Bahini, the Bengali freedom fighters Bhutto turned to Chief Justice Hamoodur Rahman of the Supreme Court, himself a Bengali, to lead the inquiry The commission investigated for two years, interviewed a large number of people, and issued its report to the government The report was not released to the public, neither by the Bhutto administration nor by any of its many successor administrations It is widely believed that the report portrays the army’s performance in East Pakistan in a very unfavorable light Accordingly, the military leadership has succeeded in keeping the report under wraps for more than a quarter century However, parts of the report were leaked to the press after the re-entry of the military into politics under General Pervez Musharraf